“Last You Heard of Me”

Barry Johnson spends very little time singing about himself on “Last You Heard of Me,” the centerpiece to Joyce Manor’s Cody. He sets the scene—sitting at a karaoke bar almost to his own surprise, jotting down someone else’s song to sing—before he forgets the whole ordeal and goes “to grab another beer.” It’s a brief introduction, but Johnson establishes an enormous degree of fatigue and reluctance. That distance grows when Sonia—a friend or possible love interest—steps outside to “smoke some weed,” he assumes. “I’d go with, but I don’t touch the stuff,” Johnson sings, “Unless I wanna go to sleep.”

The song gains momentum from the swelling pop punk guitars for which Joyce Manor are revered. For a moment, Johnson sees love, but that dissipates in favor of cold fear and abandonment—even if it’s all in his head. The final call, “And that’s the last you heard of me,” extricates Johnson once again, as he fades away from a potential mate’s potential memory. Like most Joyce Manor songs, “Last You Heard of Me” doesn’t linger. It offers more of a meditation than a solution; the loose ends are left as they were. To solve a problem, Johnson would have to actually engage the present, to confront why he’s coolly meandering at the social sidelines. Instead, “Last You Heard of Me” gently lulls itself away, saying more through less.